WHERE DID THE GOOD GO?

Where did the good go? Did it ever exist?

I thought it did — always with a tinge of experienced pain, shared regret, and maybe the feeling that, for all our differences, we shared this place and this time.

Maybe that was partly the imagined ideal of a child: not that the bad did not exist, but that it did not seem quite so rampant, so shameless, or so permanently in your face.

What I Was Taught

I was born and raised, until seventeen, in a Podunk, run-down hole in Alabama, and I was taught better. What does that mean?

I was taught by family, by history, by the stories handed down from people who had lived through harder years that freedom was not supposed to mean getting your own way. It all meant accepting that the person beside you had a life too.

Somewhere along the way, too many people forgot that. They forgot themselves morally, ethically, historically. They forgot the definition of freedom and the adage "live and let live."

Hatred is hatred. I do not care about your color, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation as a reason to decide your worth. What I resent is willful ignorance dressed up as certainty, especially when that certainty becomes an excuse to control somebody else.

PRAY / PREY

Faith is not the problem. Faith used as a weapon is, and that is where pray starts to sound and feel an awful lot like prey.

Your religion/faith can tell you how to live; it does not automatically appoint you to tell everybody else how to live, breathe, love, worship, or refuse to worship. It certainly does not anoint you as an expert or sole decision maker/defender/speaker for your god.

A priest, minister, rabbi, imam, preacher, politician, neighbor, or television loudmouth does not become an authority over another person merely by invoking God.

The Constitution protects religious exercise without establishing an official national faith. Its First Amendment contains both the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses, while Article VI bars religious tests for federal office. That is a constitutional framework, not a ban on religious people participating in public life.¹

Kindness is not a dirty word.

Neither is doubt.

Neither is leaving somebody the hell alone.

Leave Me the Hell Alone — And Mean It

One of the maxims I thought I learned growing up in the South was simple:

Let me live my life on my terms.

Fine. Then mean it. Live it.

Do not demand freedom for yourself while denying another person the freedom to think differently, believe differently, love differently, build a family differently, or simply be left alone.

That is not liberty; it is privilege dressed up and demanding to be mistaken for principle.

This is not a plea for anarchy. People have to live together. We need laws, institutions, responsibilities, limits, and enough common sense not to destroy one another. However, none of that requires a groundless belief that you are inherently better than the person next to you.

Patriotism as Deed, Not Costume

Patriotism has the same problem.

It is too often treated as a costume: a flag, a slogan, a hat, a hymn, a word shouted loudly enough that nobody asks what sits underneath it. I never thought it required testosterone and morning erection checks. Serving and defending one's country is everyone's responsibility, and I mean EVERYONE! That is everyone regardless of race, sex, stature, or who you decide to love!

But service to country has never belonged only to the military.

Teaching, caring for people, building communities, doing honest public work, protecting another person's rights, learning how the institutions actually function. These are civic acts too. The Peace Corps and AmeriCorps offer organized examples of civilian service, but public service also happens outside federal programs.²

If we are going to invoke the Constitution, religious liberty, democracy, the republic, the Electoral College, socialism, patriotism, or the founding of the country, then we ought to know what the words mean before using them as clubs.

The United States is a constitutional republic with representative democratic institutions: voters elect lawmakers, constitutional limits constrain government, and Article IV guarantees every state a republican form of government.³ The Electoral College is the constitutional process for choosing the president and vice president, not a national popular-vote election. It currently has 538 electors, and 270 electoral votes constitute a majority.⁴

The Inheritance We Squandered

There is a generational disappointment in this for me as well.

People inherited stories about war, authoritarianism, poverty, sacrifice, religious persecution, civil rights, and the cost of looking away. The French Wars of Religion and the later revocation of the Edict of Nantes offer a documented example of religious conflict, curtailed toleration, and persecution; the history is more complicated than religion alone.⁵ Yet some seem to have kept the mythology and discarded the lesson.

The failure is not that they became old, or that they are white.

The failure is that experience did not necessarily become wisdom.

That is the part I keep returning to over and over. The people who insist they know more, deserve more, or are owed more because of who they are, where they came from, what they own, what they inherited, or how loudly they can proclaim their righteousness are inherently flawed.

Power, prestige, wealth, family name, political access, or religious fervor—none of it turns taking into giving.

Duty. Deed. Honor. Faith.

Those words mean very little when they are only announced. If they mean anything, they have to appear in conduct and how you comport yourself.

Where Did the Good Go?

I have known good people of many faiths and people of no faith at all.

What they have in common is not a label. It is what they do with the space they occupy in other people's lives. They do not need to diminish somebody else to prove themselves righteous.

Maybe that is the good I thought I saw when I was younger. Maybe it was never universal. Maybe it was never even as common as I imagined. Maybe it was never there at all.

But I still know what I mean by it:

Decency without a spotlight.

Freedom that applies to all.

Faith without coercion.

Patriotism without costume.

Service without self-worship.

And enough humility to understand that nobody appointed you ruler of somebody else's existence. I do not need you to believe what I believe. I just need you to respect my position and convictions.

Sources and historical footnotes

These notes support the added historical and constitutional context; the author’s judgments and experiences remain his own.